1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of electronic commerce. More specifically, the present invention is related to enhancing sales for service providers by utilizing an opportunistic e-commerce approach based on an unexpected change in the schedule of services (time, location).
2. Discussion of Prior Art
There has been a steady increase in the speed and ease with which business transactions are carried over a network such as, but not limited to, wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LAN's), or the world wide web (WWW). Systems based on networks listed above deal with a plethora of information available in various formats (e.g., documents, images, sounds, etc.) A significant focus in recent e-commerce activities revolves around optimization solutions with the end-user as the center of the focus. One common challenge associated with such e-commerce systems is whether or not they are able to filter out relevant or pertinent information that benefits the end-user. Many filtering techniques utilize data extraction as a method to filter out unnecessary documents (or data) and provide only relevant or pertinent information that is beneficial from the end-user's perspective. Data extraction is accomplished in many systems via a method often referred to as data mining.
Data mining involves a class of database applications that look for hidden patterns in a data set. For example, data mining software helps retail companies find customers with common interests. Data mining is commonly misused to describe software that presents data in new ways. True data mining software does not just change the presentation, but discovers previously unknown relationships among the data. In data mining, data is collected at the server-side, client-side, proxy servers, or obtained from a database usually.
Data extracted via data mining fall under many different categories, one common category being web pages that are accessed by end-users via an interface (e.g., browsers like Netscape Navigator® or Internet Explorer®). In general, web pages usually contain, but are not limited to, textual and/or graphical data. One common problem associated with data extracted from web pages is that there is no standard format associated with this data. This is a significant problem encountered by data mining software, since in most cases it is not able to analyze the extracted data in a logical way.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of how lack of a specific data format affects data mining software applications. Data mining software 100 requests web page 102 (from service provider 103 via network 104) regarding information (e.g., location and time) concerning an event. When data mining software 100 receives web page 102, information regarding the time 106 and location 108 of a specific event is not in any standardized format and therefore requires data mining software to go through an entire document to extract and apply certain predetermined rules to extract these values. A predefined data format makes data extraction easy for the data mining software. One such attempt at standardization of data, more specifically calendar data, is the iCalendar specification.
The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) provides a definition of a common format for openly exchanging calendaring and scheduling information across the Internet. The iCalendar specification defines the format of calendar objects, e.g., components, properties. The components are collections of properties which specify an event, a to-do, a journal entry, free/busy time information, time zone information, or an alarm entered into a calendar. While, the iCalendar specification contains a separate event component, the “calendar event” of the current invention is broadly defined as synonymous with a calendar component, i.e., a calendar event encompasses not only an event, but also includes a to-do, a journal entry, etc.
It should be noted, the iCalendar specification was first presented as RFC 2445 (Request For Comment 2445), and as is typical with RFCs continues to be a work in progress and may change over time. However, it is within the spirit of the present invention to utilize the original iCalendar specification, any subsequent modifications thereof, or any other future calendaring format protocols. Additionally, the original iCalendar specification can be located at any RFC archive, such as http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2445.html.
Thus, the iCalendar format is suitable as an exchange format between applications or systems. The format is defined in terms of a MIME content type. This will enable the object to be exchanged using several transports, including but not limited to SMTP, HTTP, a file system, desktop interactive protocols such as the use of a memory-based clipboard or drag/drop interactions, point-to-point asynchronous communication, wired-network transport, or some form of wireless transport such as infrared might also be used.
One area in which iCalendar data is used is to record event information, e.g., a specific event location and time. This iCalendar information provides emerging Internet and e-commerce technologies valuable information that can be extracted relatively easily. Today's personalized advertising and direct marketing provides benefit extensively from such information, and furthermore data mining is more efficient if data mining software is able to extract formatted data (like iCalendar data).
Along with the advent of personal digital assistants (PDA's) with network connectivity (more specifically Internet connectivity), cellular web telephones with integrated global positioning service (GPS) receivers, etc., there are new opportunities to enhance marketing communication and resulting sales. However, none of the prior art systems utilize an opportunistic approach based on an unexpected change in the schedule of services (time, location), which results in blocking of dependents.
Whatever the precise merits, features and advantages of the above cited references, none of them achieve or fulfills the purposes of the present invention. These and other objects are achieved by the detailed description that follows.